Turner rebuilds after fire

Erik Turner is rebuilding his life after the Cornell student-athlete lost all of his possessions in a devastating fire.

The Big Red lacrosse midfielder from St. Albert was among 44 Cornell students, two staff members and two individuals of the Ithaca community displaced by the April 14 multi-building fire in Ithaca, New York.

“It’s been tough. It’s definitely pretty overwhelming,” Turner told the Gazette after a Thursday morning class. “I have limited time left in the semester so I only have to deal with it being here for a little while but at the same time there is only a little bit of time left and there is so much to do and not a lot of time to do it.

“But I’ve been pretty lucky that there is a ton of people and resources available to support me. My mom flew down the day after and the academic advisors have been giving me some good support. My teachers have been really understanding too. It’s definitely difficult but I’ve got some good people in my corner to kind of help me through it.”

Turner, 22, has no time for a pity party. Today’s showdown between No. 12 Cornell (9-4, 3-2 Ivy League) against the No. 14 Princeton Tigers (8-4, 4-1 Ivy league) for a shot at the Ivy championship in the last guaranteed home game of the season is also Senior Day for Turner and the 14-member Class of 2015.

He also starts final exams May 12 and graduation is May 24, as Cornell celebrates its 150th anniversary.

“It’s kind a pivotal time in the year for us lacrosse-wise and academically too. You don’t have time to step back,” said Turner, a history major student. “I missed a few classes obviously right after the fire because we were dealing with a bunch of situations. I went to practice the day of the fire and the days after so nothing has really stopped, it’s just kind of continued on.”

Turner was forced to flee his burning studio apartment “in my pyjama pants, a cut-off tank top shirt, some quick flip-flop shoes that were by the door and a jacket that I grabbed on my way out. That was it.”

“My mom (Gwynne) said it’s almost like an assumption that I live out of a suitcase here but I’ve been here for four years and since I’m so far from home I’m not transporting all my stuff back and forth. All of it was here,” he added. “As I got out, the first thing I was thinking about was not having my phone, just due to the fact that I didn’t want my parents to wake up in Alberta and see that there was a fire and not have heard from me and not know if I’m OK.

“But I had stuff that just can’t be replaced and those things are the toughest to lose.”

However, due to compliance issues surrounding the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Turner is restricted as to whom he can accept assistance from so the Erik Turner Fire Fund has been established at www.gofund.me/ErikTurner.

“There is one other athlete that has been affected by this and the NCAA rules are really kind of strict about us getting help from teammates, coaches, parents of our teammates, like Cornell in general, so this support (through the gofundme website) is pretty huge because it’s really the only way I can kind of get some means I need to kind of start rebuilding all my belongings and possessions because right now it’s tough,” said Turner, who did have content insurance.

The Cornell community sprang into action for the individuals affected by the fire. A hotel provided breakfast and Cornell Dinning distributed Big Red Bucks to the students. The Cornell Store also distributed clothing to each student and the Ithaca Red Cross supplied blankets and vouchers for other supplies.

“After the fire it was pretty overwhelming the kindness and generosity that we were shown. A group of students got together and created a gofundme page for all of us to kind of raise money and they were collecting clothes and that kind of stuff, just to get us through the initial few days,” said Turner, one of 19 people left with basically the clothes on their back from the fire.

He has been staying in a hotel since his mom arrived.

“We’re trying to figure out if there is going to be a place that I can move into. There was a real nice landlord who came forward and offered up these apartments. There were all doubles and you had to get kind of get matched with a stranger so I don’t know if that is necessarily ideal for me based on the lacrosse schedule and I have a very specific way that I need to prepare and sleep. I was also living by myself so kind of getting a roommate all of a sudden wasn’t exactly ideal,” said the all-time career top scorer for the junior B Tier I St. Albert Crude, with 119 goals, 123 assists and 242 points in only 42 games.

Turner’s life-altering moment started around 4:30 a.m., when the four-storey building he lived in and the Chapter House next door were engulfed in flames.

“I woke up due to some noises coming from my bedroom window, it kind of faces this alley, and the noises kind of startled me awake. My bedroom window is pretty covered because I don’t want light coming in while I’m trying to sleep but I could see an orange glow so then I moved to my kitchen area, which has some more open windows that face the alley and saw the fire so I quickly got out of there. I only have one exit in the apartment so I bolted out of there pretty quick,” Turner recalled.

“There is two buildings basically less than six feet apart so there is an alley way in between where my bedroom window kind of faced. I was one of the first ones out of my building because my windows are right by the alley. Our alarm in our building hadn’t gone off yet but some people from the building beside me were already out and as people started to filter out we were making sure they got as far away from it as possible. Everybody was kind of yelling to make sure people knew it was real and it wasn’t just a drill kind of thing.

“It was kind of surprising how quick the instincts kind of kicked in; you need to get out of here, you need to get to safety but it was something you don’t really expect to wake up to in the middle of the night.”

In the meantime, Turner is doing “as good as can be expected, I guess,” but the low point was his first game since the fire last Saturday against Brown.

“We got absolutely dominated,” he said of the 15-6 setback, the team’s worst loss in more of a decade. “They played super well, we didn’t play that well and it was a tough loss for us to take and after that I was like this is the worst week ever.”

Turner is the lone Albertan and one of three Canadians on Cornell’s 42-man roster. He has played in 12 games this year, more than the last three seasons combined.

“You work pretty much your whole four years to get an opportunity to play and I finally got that chance this year. I’m on the second midfield line so I’m getting playing time every game. It’s awesome to be out there. You actually feel like you’re contributing to the success of the team. We’re 9-4 right now so playing for an Ivy League title is something we want to do every year and have that chance to go to the NCAA tournament so that’s all kind of within our reach so it’s been a really good year,” said one of the organizers for the annual 21 Run in support of The Mario St. George Boiardi Foundation, which honours the memory of the lacrosse player who lost his life playing the game he loved in March of 2004.

Turner’s post-graduation plan was to stay in the Cornell area before his apartment lease was up July 31 but he will now return home and play senior lacrosse. He is listed on the senior B Edmonton Warriors’ 40-man protected list in the Rocky Mountain league.

“I was going to enjoy a summer here because I’ve never done it before but not now.”